Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/214

[92 HISTORY OF GREECE. October. This was the characteristic festival of the Ionic race ; handed down from a period anterior to the constitution of Kleis- thenes, and to the ten new tribes each containing so many denies, and bringing together the citizens in their primitive unions of family, gens, phratry, etc., the aggregate of which had originally constituted the four Ionic tribes, now superannuated. At the Apaturia, the family ceremonies were gone through ; marriages were enrolled, acts of adoption were promulgated and certified, the names of youthful citizens first entered on the gentile and phratric roll ; sacrifices were jointly celebrated by these family assemblages to Zeus Phratrius, Athene, and other deities, accom- panied with much festivity and enjoyment. A solemnity like this, celebrated every year, naturally provoked in each of these little unions, questions of affectionate interest : " Who are those that were with us last year, but are not here now ? The absent, where are they ? The deceased, where or how did they die ? " Now the crews of the twenty-five Athenian triremes, lost at the battle of Arginusae, at least all those among them who were free- men, had been members of some one of these family unions, and were missed on this occasion. The answer to the above inquiry, in their case, would be one alike melancholy and revolting : " They fought like brave men, and had their full share in the victory : their trireme was broken, disabled, and made a wreck, in the battle : aboard this wreck they were left to perish, while their victorious generals and comrades made not the smallest effort to preserve them." To hear this about fathers, brothers, and friends, and to hear it in the midst of a sympathizing family circle, was well calculated to stir up an agony of shame, sorrow, and anger, united ; an intolerable sentiment, which required as a satisfaction, and seemed even to impose as a duty, the punish- ment of those who had left these brave comrades to perish. Many of the gentile unions, in spite of the usually festive and cheerful character of the Apaturia, were so absorbed by this sentiment, that they clothed themselves in black garments and shaved their heads in token of mourning, resolving to present themselves in this guise at the coming assembly, and to appease the manes of their abandoned kinsmen by every possible effort to procure retribution on the generals. 1 1 Lysias pats into one of his orations a similar expression respecting the